Follow That Town [Review: Mortal Engines]

Score: 3 out of 5 stars
All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars

A small Bavarian mining village is minding its' own business when suddenly a predator city appears on the horizon. The town packs up its' houses, shops and streets and makes a dash for it but it's too small to outrun the caterpillar tracks of London, and its' fate is sealed. However as the village is pillaged and torn apart to feed the furnaces of London, amongst the villagers being "welcomed" into London's immigration system, there is a certain young lady with a desperate agenda.

Mortal Engines is a Peter Jackson-directed movie based on the Philip Reeve novel for children, young adults and old adults, set in a post-apocalyptic Earth a thousand years into the future, where cities have been uprooted and mobilized on wheels, legs or tracks, and where "municipal Darwinism" rules - the bigger cities prey on the smaller ones, and it seems London has become the biggest of all. The challenge for this film is to bring to life this very eccentric vision of city-sized vehicles driving furiously across a desolate landscape, without losing the humanity and the stories of the characters brought together by the clash of cities.

Does it succeed? Mostly. The traction city of London is an awesome creation, topped with St. Pauls Cathedral and its' gardens, its' overpopulated levels packed with houses and office blocks and connected by a transit system that combines the Tube, the red double-decker buses and the London Eye, and the entire structure driven on massive engines topped with Trafalgar Square lions. London kicks ass, and its' colourful citizens cheering in bloodthirsty fashion from their terraces as the City gives chase to its' next victim are just the icing on the cake. Meanwhile I can't describe in detail the other cities visited without the cast as that would be major spoilerage, but they are imaginative and full of character.

The central characters of Mortal Engines are mostly played by unknowns - at least in the Western Sphere. The singer Jihae, playing the rebel leader Anna Fang, is of course well known and loved in South Korea but hasn't broken the West yet - hopefully we will see or hear more of her. The unfamiliarity means that the cast are in competition with the cities to steal the limelight, and the cities put up a good fight. However I felt the lead players, Robert Sheehan and Hera Hilmarsdottir, gave super performances, and the most familiar face amongst the cast, Hugo Weaving, is a good choice for a villain who actually gets to do some genuinely villainous things *innocent face*.

Genuinely villainous. This is an extremely violent movie for a 12-certificate release. It is a war film of sorts. There is a lot of death, destruction and injury, whether in human-on-human firefights or in the collateral damage when cities clash or fall. Blood guts and gore are sparing - most deaths are clean, off-screen or implied, Doctor Who style, and sometimes this can be confusing.

For a movie based on such an original concept, it has to be said that Mortal Engines is derivative in some ways, and this comes down more to the way the movie has been styled than the original novel. London and particularly the Londoners are highly reminiscent of the Hunger Games' Capitol, and many aspects of the movie echo Star Wars, from paternity revelations to the assault by small flying machines on the Doomsday device. The novel itself, while original in many ways, also has its' precedents, such as the Christopher Priest novel Inverted World which also features a travelling city.

Overall I felt despite the derivative elements, Mortal Engines was a decent, enjoyable movie that well deserves its' highly accurate and meaningful rating of 3 stars out of 5.

The Epic Journey Baggins [Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey]

As an aside, may I say how excited I was to learn that The Hobbit has been shot at the revolutionary hi-tech rate of 48 frames per second. I must add that my sheer ecstasy at this envelope-pushing feat was only slightly tempered by the fact that, thanks to the miracle of interlacing, television has been broadcast at 50 frames per second since the 1920s. Way to go Peter Jackson!

Do I need to summarise? Perhaps. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first of a planned trilogy adapted from Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) recounts an adventure that takes him out of the cosy Shire and into the dangerous reaches of Middle Earth in the company of an elderly wizard (Sir Ian McKellan) and a band of dwarves seeking to re-take their mountain kingdom.

There is a trend for expanding books into multiple films: Harry Potter 7 and Twilight 4 were both made into two-parters. The commercial advantages are obvious, although in the case of Harry Potter 7 I think it was also a good artistic decision.

However, The Hobbit is a short, children’s novel, so developing it into a trilogy means playing fast and loose with the pacing, expanding back-stories, flashbacks and action scenes sometimes to the point of boredom. On the other hand some of the action is great – a scene in which nature-wizard Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) leads the Orcs a merry chase in his rabbit-sleigh is both dramatic and amusing, in keeping with the light tone of the novel.

Another aspect of the film perhaps a little too faithful to the novel is the near-absence of femininity. Unlike modern sci-fi and fantasy which is full of strong, confident and interesting female characters, Tolkien's cast are predominantly male, and I have to be honest and say I found the film a little less enjoyable as a result. Cate Blanchett is excellent as the elven queen, for her few minutes on-screen. Otherwise women are just background – Hobbit washerwomen in the Shire, elven musicians in Rivendell. There may have been a female dwarf running away from a dragon in one of the flashbacks.

Overall the strengths of this film outweigh these points – as with The Lord Of The Rings, Tolkien’s fantasy landscape is once again brought to life, the film is very faithful to the characters and Middle Earth lore, and once again the cast are incredible – hard to say which out of Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis (once again playing Gollum via motion-capture) or Sylvester McCoy is the real show-stealer.

Review: District 9

2009 is proving to be an extraordinary year for science fiction cinema - and there may be more surprises to come.

District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, is refreshing for so many different reasons - not least the complete absence of a single American or British accent or familiar face amongst the cast. Sharlto Copley plays the lead role, Wikus van der Merwe, as a delightful anti-hero - a civillian office worker suddenly promoted beyond his ability and put in charge of an army squadron who clearly hate him. There's more than a touch of David Brent about his character and while - naturally - he learns the error of his ways through a series of ironic plot twists, his unthinking prejudice and utter cowardice is a huge part of the story.

We've also moved way beyond the sci-fi blockbuster as just a series of national monuments to be trashed (unless, that is, we happen to be Roland Emmerich) - this is a blockbuster with plenty of action, particularly as Wikus' two man army storms MNU headquarters, but also extremely strong on character, story and the striking Johannesburg location. And this film doesn't just have great special effects - it knows how to use them. The Independence-Day style mothership is a good example: rather than being the focus of the action it's beautifully composited into the background of every other shot.

District 9 made me think about persecution in general and a particularly abhorrent recurrent event in history - forced relocations of entire populations such as the Trail of Tears. While falling short of literal genocide, relocation is still a particularly dehumanizing act, both because the victims are often processed more like farm livestock than humans, and because the act tears people away from their homes, possessions and familiar places that form the foundations of a culture.